Arc System Works has released new trailers for Super Double Dragon and Double Dragon Advance. Both games will launch on 9th November 2023 for $6.99 USD or the regional equivalent.
Update #1 [Tue 29th Aug, 2023 01:00 BST]:
Following the official announcement last month, Arc System Works has now released the first official trailer highlighting all the games in the Double Dragon Collection. It’s mentioned at the end that it’s “expected to release on November 9th, 2023”.
“The long-awaited Double Dragon Advance and Super Double Dragon are making a double comeback this year! After 20 years, the first official ports for both games will be making their way to modern consoles on November 9, 2023.”
In addition to this, a Double Dragon Collection has also been announced for the Switch. It will be made available physically and digitally in Japan and will contain Super and Advance along with the original four games previously released as standalone purchases on the eShop.
The collection package will arrive in Japan later this year on 9th November 2023. Here’s the full list (via Gematsu):
If we hear any updates, we’ll let you know. Super Double Dragon and Double Dragon Advance have also been confirmed for Xbox and PlayStation platforms, but the collection offering appears to be limited to the Switch for now.
What do you think of this collection announcement? Comment below.
Image: John Wick as seen in Fortnite (via Epic Games)
The Mortal Kombat series has had a lot of movie and celebrity crossovers throughout the years and the latest game Mortal Kombat 1 is no different with a cameo from Jean-Claude Van Damme and voice work by Megan Fox.
We’ve also seen characters like Terminator and Robocop, but one that apparently continues to elude Ed Boon and his team is the retired assassin John Wick, played by the one and only Keanu Reeves. Although this character has been featured in games like Fortnite, standalone titles, and the actor himself has shown up in Cyberpunk 2077 as Johnny Silverhand, unfortunately, NetherRealm didn’t have any luck securing him.
The series co-creator and game director didn’t elaborate on why the team wasn’t able to get John Wick, but here’s what he did say during an interview with Rolling Stone:
The series has always been steeped in Seventies and Eighties action cinema. Are you being influenced at all by modern action cinema now?
Ed Boon: “When we were making Mortal Kombat (1992), the whole team was in the midst of Bloodsport, Enter the Dragon, and all the Terminator movies. I could certainly see the John Wicks of the world… as a matter of fact, that is one of the ones that we tried to get – John Wick – in Mortal Kombat, and we didn’t get it.”
Of course, there’s still a chance a cameo like this could happen in the future. The current DLC lineup for Mortal Kombat 1 includes Omni-Man from Invincible, Homelander from The Boys, Peacemaker from the DC universe as well as Quan Chi, Ermac and Takashi Takeda. Just yesterday, a new rumour surfaced about the next possible batch of DLC fighters for Mortal Kombat 1:
Would you like to see John Wick one day make an appearance in the Mortal Kombat series? Tell us below.
Following last week’s news about No Man’s Sky having one of its “biggest months” in the last few years, the team at Hello Games has rolled out a new ‘Echoes’ update.
Although it’s not live on the Nintendo Switch just yet, it will be released on this platform “as soon as possible”. The main Echoes update, arrived back in August – adding a new robotic race, improved visuals and much more.
According to the latest patch notes for Version 4.45, the FSR2 visuals will be improved on Switch and there are various optimisation improvements. Here’s the full rundown, courtesy of the official No Man’s Sky website:
No Man’s Sky – Patch 4.45 (September 18, 2023)
Bug fixes
Fixed a very rare issue that caused the A Leap in the Dark mission to fail to advance after opening the portal.
Fixed a rare issue that could prevent the Artemis path from correctly starting up after converting a save from Expedition mode.
Fixed a rare issue where the story catalogue for Under a Rebel Star would not display the final entry.
The rewards given by the Autophage when practising language skills have been improved.
Fixed an issue that caused some Autophage text to fail to display correctly in the story catalogue.
Expanded the list of completed objectives shown in the mission log.
Fixed an issue that could cause some missions to direct players to the Station Core while in an abandoned system, where no station core is present.
Fixed an issue in They Who Returned where, after resetting the mission, the Autophage at the initial harmonic camp could give the wrong dialogue, blocking mission process. Players already affected by this issue may need to reset the mission again in order to proceed.
Fixed an issue that could cause missions to send players to crash sites that do not have a ship.
Fixed an issue that allowed players to destroy cargo pods and turrets on their own freighters.
The Outlaw faction milestone for killing traders has been replaced with a milestone for raiding freighters.
The behaviour of small AI fighters around large vessels has been improved.
Fixed an issue that allowed players to destroy salvageable scrap while their inventory was full, and thus not receive the scrap.
Fixed a rare issue that could cause players to slowly run out of oxygen and die despite being on a planet surface.
Fixed an issue which caused the ship inventory to be out of range.
Fixed an issue that was preventing all creatures from pooping.
Fixed an issue which caused incorrect multitools to be available at Sentinel Pillars.
Fixed an issue that could cause player capes to behave erratically while placing base parts.
Fixed a rare issue that could allow the player to fall through the floor upon loading.
Fixed an issue that could cause players to fall through the floor when using a very specific freighter base part.
Fixed an issue that could cause all players in the system to lose standing when another player destroyed civilian freighters.
Fixed an issue that prevented usage of the gyro options page on the Switch under specific circumstances.
Fixed an issue that caused the wrong icons to be used for the Returner’s Drape and Wanderer’s Cloak.
Added new Dreadnaught warp effect.
Introduced a performance optimisation for instance rendering.
Introduced a slight optimisation to light rendering.
Fixed a rendering issue that could cause a brief visual glitch.
Fixed an issue that could cause visual glitches in some particle effects.
Fixed a visual issue with particles when using HDR.
Introduced an optimisation to sky and star rendering.
Improved the visual quality of star rendering.
Fixed a Xbox-only rendering corruption issue.
FSR2 visuals on Nintendo Switch have been further refined and improved.
Introduced a number of rendering optimisations for Nintendo Switch.
Introduced a number of texture optimisations and improvements for Nintendo Switch.
Introduced a significant memory optimisation for Switch.
Fixed a crash related to procedural texture generation.
Fixed a memory-related crash that could occur when returning to the mode or save select screen during a storm.
Fixed a number of crashes related to memory management.
Fixed a graphics memory-related crash on PC.
Fixed a crash that could affect PC users with specific AMD video cards.
Fixed a PC-only crash that could occur when playing No Man’s Sky at the same time as other applications are using video memory.
Have you revisited No Man’s Sky on the Nintendo Switch at all recently? Tried out the Echoes update yet? Tell us below.
There’s no reason attached to this announcement, but the same update reveals the decision to not pursue the development of “new content” for the game on other platforms. Servers will remain online in the “foreseeable future” and any major issues that arise will also be addressed.
“On behalf of the entire team at Saber, thank you for all the groovy times and your continued support.”
Although Evil Dead: The Game was eventually released on other platforms, it did experience multiple delays leading up to this point. The last update on the Switch release was also some time ago, with Saber Interactive and Boss Games mentioning at the time how it was still scheduled to release on Nintendo’s hybrid platform. Obviously, this won’t be happening now.
This title had players step into the shoes of Ash Williams (played by Bruce Campbell) and multiple other survivors – tasking them with sealing the breach between worlds in co-op and PvP multiplayer modes. Although this title won’t be coming to Switch, it is still available on other platforms – so if you really did want to give it a go, the option is there.
How are you feeling about this cancellation? Leave your thoughts below.
Were it not for Nintendo’s monumentally successful Mario Kart franchise, there’s a good chance that F-Zero could have become the go-to racing franchise on not just Nintendo platforms, but everywhere. It really is that good, you know.
Trading bananas and shells for pure speed and boost abilities, F-Zero — which predated Mario’s karting debut by 21 months — is a much more demanding racer than Mario Kart has ever claimed to be. As such, its widespread appeal has been a tad more limited, with Nintendo struggling to find a place for the series since the GBA’s Japan-only F-Zero Climax in 2004.
Thankfully, F-Zero fans have been treated to a brand new (sort of) entry in 2023 with F-Zero 99, a battle-royale spin on the original SNES title that we’re hoping serves as a test bed for future installments. After all, fans have been extremely vocal about their desires for a new F-Zero, so we’ve got our fingers crossed that this just might be the start of something beautiful.
As such, we thought it was about time we collated all mainline F-Zero games and found out which one is the very best, as voted by you. We’ve got our opinions, but this isn’t about us!
We’ve chosen to omit two entries here, namely the 64DD ‘Expansion Kit‘ for F-Zero X, since, well… it’s an expansion for an existing title that requires the N64 game to function, along with F-Zero AX, an arcade variant of F-Zero GX (which is actually present and playable — if you’ve got an Action Replay — on the little GameCube disc).
Of course, you still have the power here to determine the rankings in real time. Simply make sure you’re signed into your Nintendo Life account, click the ‘star’ icon next to each game, and give it a score from 1 to 10. If you’ve rated any of these games previously, thank you!
So without further ado, let’s dive into the best F-Zero games of all time and see which one comes out on top…
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nd Cube
Release Date: 11th Jun 2001 (USA) / 22nd Jun 2001 (UK/EU)
As a strictly single-player experience, F-Zero: Maximum Velocity still holds up today as a result of its smooth, skill-based gameplay. There may only be four cups in which to compete, but the varied difficulty and surprisingly steep learning curve when it comes to mastering the vehicles and tracks make this a game you want to keep coming back to. However, aside from the relatively limited practice and time attack modes, that’s all there is. It doesn’t necessarily offer as much in terms of value for money but, if you’re really keen on the series or don’t care about multiplayer, this is an enjoyable dose of the franchise that also highlights what the last Game Boy could really do.
Publisher: Nintendo
Release Date: 21st Oct 2004 (JPN)
F-Zero Climax is unfortunately only officially available to GBA owners in Japan, which is a shame because it’s a more-than-solid third effort for the franchise on Nintendo’s humble li’l Boy. It might have felt like a mere expansion to GP Legend to some folks, but it demonstrated beautifully developer Suzak’s prowess when it comes to handheld racers. Here’s hoping it makes its way over to the West in some capacity; more people need to experience F-Zero Climax.
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo EAD
Release Date: Aug 1991 (USA) / 1992 (UK/EU)
F-Zero was an incredible template on which its sublime successors were modelled, and for that we shall forever be thankful. That’s not to say the original isn’t a gem in its own right; it’s a racing classic that feels fast and tight to this day, but its lack of multiplayer tends to put it behind its sequels, at least in our minds (a criticism that F-Zero 99 addresses). Still, this remains a thrilling 16-bit ride, and we’re more than happy to fire it up again — via Nintendo Switch Online if we don’t happen to have our SNES hooked up — whenever the notion takes us.
If the story missions in F-Zero: GP Legend become too gruelling, there’s always the option of tackling Grand Prix mode across a variety of difficulty tiers, which helps scale up the challenge as your skills improve. Before long you will be snaking your way around eye-watering turns and hazards in an unblinking state, where your muscle memory kicks in and nothing can break your concentration. That is the true F-Zero experience. That the format endures is testament to the series’ gripping, yet savage design. With hours of content and challenge, GP Legend is a stellar handheld F-Zero experience.
Despite its relatively unchanged look compared to the 16-bit original, F-Zero 99 is unexpectedly refreshing. Though it may not be the return for the franchise that fans hoped for, it’s a triumphant and welcome look back at Captain Falcon’s first game with a clever twist. F-Zero is simply suited for the -99 style structure in ways that Tetris, Mario, and Pac-Man aren’t; it was already an elimination-style battle royale, just a small one. Adding more players doesn’t just feel perfect for F-Zero, it feels natural.
This isn’t the definitive way to play F-Zero, but it is a brilliant take that supplements what worked so well in the original with thoughtful additions that make chasing victory utterly addictive.
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Nintendo EAD
Release Date: 27th Oct 1998 (USA) / 6th Nov 1998 (UK/EU)
Available On: NSO + Expansion Pack
Forum wars continue to wage over whether F-Zero X or its successor on GameCube is the superior white-knuckle futuristic racer. Both are essential, of course. The 64-bit entry is metal: pure, simple, guitar-screeching, all-out metal. EAD stripped back extraneous detail to achieve the smoothest, most blistering and nail-bitingly precise racing experience. At this speed, on these dizzying tracks, even the tiniest prod on the spindly analogue stick matters, and the original N64 pad offers peak precision for micro adjustments which make the difference between gracefully sweeping through a corner with nary a pixel to spare… or catching said corner and ricocheting between barriers to an explosive, humiliating retirement.
How much more metal could this get? None. None more metal. Flaming skulls and chromed motorcycles would actually reduce the metal content of this game.
Publisher: Nintendo / Developer: Amusement Vision
Release Date: 26th Aug 2003 (USA) / 31st Oct 2003 (UK/EU)
While debate forever rages as to whether the N64 entry or its Sega-developed GameCube sequel is better, we can all agree that both games are rather special in their own right. F-Zero GX‘s story mode helps paint a picture of the ‘F-universe’ and those cutscenes featuring Captain Falcon and the gang sure add some pizzazz. The series also certainly never looked better than on GameCube. The breakneck speed and brutal difficulty might put some people off, but racing doesn’t get much purer than this, and seeing as this was the last full-blown retail entry from the franchise to come to a home console, this is still arguably the hottest take on F-Zero going. Track it down.
So that’s about it; the running order of the F-Zero series. Surprised by the podium?Remember, the ranking above is subject to change according to each game’s User Ratings on the site, so if you’re not happy with one of your favourites being in the bottom half, have your say by giving it a personal score out of 10 and watch to see if/how that influences the table.
Feel free to let us know your thoughts and share a comment about your personal favourites below.
Hot off the ridiculously popular Barbie movie earlier this year, publisher Budge Studios will be bringing Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures to the Switch eShop on October 27th, 2023.
Originally released for mobile devices in 2018, Dreamhouse Party sees you join Barbie and her friends as you cook, bake, dance, and dress up as you engage in a multitude of activities.
Granted, there’s no sign of Robert Oppenheimer making any kind of appearance here, but it looks like a fun time for kids interested in the Barbie brand.
Here’s some more information from Budge Studios:
LET’S MOVE IN Are you into home design makeovers? Help me design every room with wonderful wallpapers and dazzling decorations. Make it your own Dreamhouse!
THE COOLEST FRIENDS Meet my best friends: Barbie “Brooklyn” Roberts, Renee, a sports fanatic; Daisy, a talented DJ; Teresa, a science-lover; Nikki, an aspiring fashion designer and the one-and-only Ken. Plus, my family including my fun-loving sisters: Skipper, Stacie and Chelsea! Even my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Roberts are joining in on the adventure!
COOKING AND BAKING Why don’t you join me in my awesome kitchen? There are so many delicious recipes to cook! Get baking with Skipper and post your tasty recipes on BarbieGram for everyone to see! Mmm… Are those cupcakes I smell?!
DRESS UP Got any fashion tips? Dress-up in beautiful princess dresses or relax in super comfy pj’s, there’s an outfit for everyone!
HAIRSTYLES Get ready for a makeover! There’s a hair salon in the DreamHouse and you can design tons of different hairstyles! Have a girls makeover day with Teresa and check out all the cool accessories you can add to your new look!
Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures is currently available for pre-order at a price of £34.99.
Does this one tickle your fancy? Let us know if you plan on bagging the latest Barbie game with a comment down below.
Last week’s champion, Starfield, has taken a tumble down to eighth this time around as Hogwarts Legacy climbs to the top spot once again. The Crew Motorfest speeds into second place in its chart debut and even Red Dead Redemption 2 has popped back into the top ten.
The 17th-century German rationalist philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz wrote that “Perfection is the harmony of things.” If that’s the case then our discordant parping in Trombone Champ is far from perfect – despite the multipliers received on maxing out our ‘Champ’ gauge. But you don’t need to achieve perfection to enjoy Trombone Champ; you just have to strive for it.
Having been discovered on Steam as a rich seam of irresistible meme material in 2022, the zany brass-sim from Holy Wow has most probably crossed your radar at some point. Now, almost exactly a year after its PC release, Switch owners have been blessed with their very own version, shadow-dropped alongside a surprise reveal in the recent Nintendo Direct.
Gameplay, in case you’re unfamiliar, is different from a lot of rhythm action fare in that you must work on both pitch and timing. Your instrument being a trombone, the pitch is modulated with a slide and the rhythm input with a single tooting button. This means you actually have a free-moving cursor that must be aligned to incoming notes on the screen, making precise intonation a finicky business. What’s more, the PC version’s mouse has been swapped for Joy-Con motion control, lending even less fidelity to your commands. The upshot of the whole setup is that your playing is unlikely to sound very professional, even after hours of practice.
There is a choice of four different input methods but none of them gives an easy ride. The default is to hold one Joy-Con and tilt it with your wrist to move the trombone slide, operating the mouth and lungs by pressing any one of the four shoulder buttons across your two Joy-Cons. This means you can parp with your left hand and slide with your right, as we preferred, or work entirely with one hand.
Another tilting option is designed for swinging the whole arm up and down, which is funny for its desperate stretching to reach the low notes when the calibration gets out of whack.
A further option is the practically impossible thumbstick control, and finally, there’s the infrared option, in which the right Joy-Con measures its rarely-used reflected light to judge its distance from something. (We found it fun to point it at our chest and wave clumsily in and out exactly like a real trombone.) All of these options are silly and, although the default mode is clearly the one to stick with, not a single one gets around the sheer impossibility of playing smoothly.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
But this doomed control scheme is absolutely fine for two reasons. Firstly, the rating of your toots is exactly lenient enough: it has the required strictness to make the game fun and challenging, but it will happily dish out a ‘Perfecto’ for a note that still sounds more than a little wobbly.
Secondly, the inaccuracy of your performance is nonetheless precisely hilarious every time. As the comedian Stewart Lee once said, there’s nothing funnier than trying to do your best, and Trombone Champ bears that out. Holy Wow lean into this fact gloriously with their recognisable-despite-everything catalogue of mainly public domain music and arrangements that know when to expose the trombone for wince-inducing solos. Painfully howling out ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ as fireworks explode triumphantly against a backdrop of hamburgers and fluttering flags never gets old.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
And if this all sounds a bit chaotic, then wait till we get into the multiplayer. For the Switch release, Trombone Champ allows up to four ‘musicians’ to co-serenade anyone unfortunate enough to be within earshot, with all the subtlety and expression of a primary school recorder ensemble. Each player has a slide and all try to play the same part as in single player. We soon discovered that, when it comes to playing in tune, four wrongs don’t make a right. In fact, they make things very much less right.
Everything about the experience is multiplied: the difficulty of playing in tune with one another and the backing track; the cacophony of your best efforts; but also the thrill of not actually sounding all that terrible for a half-minute stretch. The brief moments when listeners can take their fingers out of their ears are a rush. It’s an additional angle on what is already great party game fodder.
All this wild gameplay is wrapped up in a neat parcel of barmy presentation. The game immediately loads into a 50/50 split between Castlevania-esque gothic imagery and WarioWare-esque explosive craziness. It then launches into absurd trombone lore focused entirely around baboons. One range of unlockables, such as new trombone sounds, is obtained by gathering points – ‘toots’ – and trading them with a baboon. Another option is to use your toots – or an alternative currency of ‘turds’ – to buy trading cards featuring famous musicians and different types of baboon, replete with brief biographical ‘facts’, typically declaring how many hotdogs Beethoven et al could eat in a single sitting.
Conclusion
Trombone Champ is a game about perfection. Before you play, it asks you to select a stance for your tromboner: ‘estudious’ or ‘jubilant’. Neither of these is appropriate when you know your performance will be as ear-abusive as an excited puppy mauling a bulb horn. Or are they? The true lesson is perhaps to hold your head high anyway. In life, as in Trombone Champ, faced as we all are with certain doom, be estudious if you like, be jubilant, parp like crazy, and be your very best you – no matter how imperfect that invariably is.
Everyone’s favourite game developer-turned-YouTuber Masahiro Sakurai is back with another entry in his Creating Games series, and his latest video once again sees Kirby’s Dream Land take centre stage.
This time, Sakurai uses the classic Game Boy title to discuss the level of difficulty in video games and how it needs to be balanced so that the reward matches the risk. Kirby’s Dream Land gives you extra lives, the ability to fly and a good attack range among other things which in turn reduces the game’s ‘essence’ but increases its broad appeal — anyone can have a crack at a Kirby game, and that’s the point.
The OG Dream Land is a pretty easy playthrough by today’s standards and Sakurai uses this video to explain how that’s all intentional, stating that “we need to be kind to beginners”:
Even if it’s less thrilling than Mario, or even if some people think it’s boring, it accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do.
We enjoy a hardcore game every now and then, where finally defeating a boss in Hollow Knight or Elden Ring after the 100th attempt results in a huge rush of euphoria, but let’s not forget that not everyone games the same way, and even the simplest levels can come with their own unique challenges. Sakurai notes the “extremely large business opportunity” of this audience, which isn’t quite the ‘everyone is welcome‘ message that we expected from the video but hey, you can’t be Mr. Smash Bros. without knowing your business 101s…
Do you find Kirby games too easy or can you see the purpose of their difficulty? Float down to the comments and let us know.
The FTC case examining Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, depending on your perspective, is either the gift that keeps on giving or an eye-scrapingly dull, never-ending saga. Still, you can’t deny that it’s turned up some tasty behind-the-scenes morsels to chew on, giving gamers a fascinating glimpse of the day-to-day correspondences and conversation topics between some of the biggest names in the gaming industry.
Today’s revelations will be keeping our friends over at Pure Xbox busy for some time, and we can’t imagine Microsoft’s top brass is happy to have its product plans, next-gen timelines, and unannounced projects ejected into the vacuum of the internet for all to see (although let’s face it, nothing on that roster of potential games is particularly groundbreaking — holy crap, they’re working on another DOOM and some remasters?! Unprecedented!).
Obviously, around these parts, we’re more interested in an email between Xbox boss Phil Spencer and Microsoft CMOs Chris Capossela and Takeshi Numoto in which he explains his feelings around a potential acquisition of Nintendo by the US firm.
It’s juicy stuff, and it’s unusual to see such frank discussion of the topic between Microsoft’s bigwigs. However, it should come as precisely zero surprise to anyone that Nintendo is, as Spencer puts it, “THE prime asset for us in Gaming.” Given its historic place in the industry and its ability to craft evergreen, genre-shaping software while sticking to its core tenants of surprising and delighting a fiercely loyal audience, Microsoft being keen to co-opt Nintendo’s prestige and expertise — not to mention its huge catalogue of all-ages IP — is the definition of a no-brainer.
‘1-2-Switch, only on Xbox.’ You know what, that sounds fine, actually — Image: Nintendo Life
Can you imagine the explosive overnight expansion in the Xbox demographic if it were suddenly the home of all Mario, Pokémon, Zelda, Animal Crossing, Kirby, and Metroid games? Any software-starved, cash-rich company in its right mind is keeping a watchful eye on Nintendo at all times, ready to make a move should “opportunities” arise.
Massive coroporation would like to get its hands on Mario? Shocker. You know what? Sony wouldn’t mind that, either.
Looking at the email text, it’s the mention of applying pressure for increased stock performance via Nintendo’s Board of Directors, and the potential destabilisation and “opportunities” this might create for Microsoft to move closer to Nintendo, which feels like the most hostile, underhanded, and unsavoury detail. But again, while the naked, aggressive Capitalism of it might make Nintendo loyalists and lovers of the medium uncomfortable (and go against Spencer’s magnanimous, inclusive ‘Uncle Phil’ persona), it’s Business 101. There’s really nothing incendiary about these revelations. Massive corporation would like to get its hands on Mario? Shocker. You know what? Sony wouldn’t mind that, either.
Reading the text, you might come to the conclusion that Spencer’s perspective that Nintendo’s “future exists off of their own hardware” is totally pie-in-the-sky. And you wouldn’t be wrong, although the troubled Wii U was fresher in people’s minds back then. This email dates from 2020 and although Switch was doing very nicely at the time (Animal Crossing: New Horizons had launched three months prior), the idea that its success could be a pendulum swing before another disappointing console was far from crazy. And, to be fair, we’re still in the dark about exactly what a ‘Switch 2’ will be and how it will fare; it’s entirely possible that Nintendo’s next consoles won’t click with a mass-market audience in the same way. The ball is Nintendo’s to drop.
2020 was a while ago now, but Nintendo’s strength has only grown since then — Image: Nintendo Life
However, even if the next console were some colossal disaster, Nintendo has diversified its business in the past few years for precisely this reason. Its gradual evolution into a Disney-like ‘entertainment’ company (as Doug Bowser recently called it) — an evergreen and familiar brand built around not just video games, but theme parks, movies, and merchandising up the wazoo — is, in part, a risk avoidance strategy to weather any storms in its console hardware business. You can’t just put all your eggs in one hybrid basket and rely on every single console to be a stonking success.
[sharks are] always circling, whether there’s blood in the water or not. That’s just business.
Ultimately, as Spencer referenced in his email, Nintendo’s cash reserves are substantial and the company would need to produce several Wii Us in a row before it would be in any financial danger. Yes, the sharks would be circling, but if this email reveals anything, it’s that they’re always circling, whether there’s blood in the water or not. That’s just business.
Could Microsoft make a move on Nintendo in the future? It’s not impossible, but it would involve the Kyoto company stepping on multiple rakes and dealing itself catastrophic financial damage over a decade or more. The ongoing Microsoft/Activision saga demonstrates just how many hurdles big acquisition deals can throw up. Add in competition from other corporations worldwide, from China and the Middle East, and the required chain of events that lead to a Microsoft-owned Nintendo from where we are right now would be…not inconceivable, but far-fetched enough to be farcical. Spencer himself writes that Microsoft is “playing the long game,” which is just as well. It’ll be a very long game indeed.
Image: Nintendo
So no, there’s very little for Nintendo loyalists to worry about after seeing these three-year-old emails. If increased cooperation between Microsoft and Nintendo leads to boons like getting Ori and Cuphead on Switch, Banjo in Smash, and — oh, I don’t know — Diddy Kong Racing on Nintendo Switch Online, perhaps, or a Rare Replay Switch port (now there’s a pipedream worth fixating on), Nintendo gamers only stand to gain right now.
